The Ultimate Collection

Hip-O Select;
2005

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Since she died strung out and broke in 1959, the perception of Billie
Holiday's art has hardened around the grim facts of her biography.
She's
a primary figure in the Cult of Pain pantheon, alleged proof that the
black coal of bad circumstances and poor choices can sometimes be
compressed into an artistic diamond. Her signature song was "Lady Sings
the Blues", and while she preferred to think of her work in the tradition of smooth, sophisticated
pop, her life was filled with sadness from the beginning. Still a
teenager when she first dabbled in heroin and prostitution, Holiday was
a successful singer in her early 20s and died before reaching 50. We're
told about the suffering inside her weary phrasing and when she
delivered a line like "I'd rather my man would hit me then for him to
jump up and quit me" and "I swear I won't call no copper if I'm beat up
by my poppa" in "'Taint Nobody's Business if I Do", we remember her
destructive taste in lovers and the never-ending string of abusive
relationships. The words she croaked on the Lady in Satin album,
recorded a few months before her death, are received as an epitaph.

It wasn't always so. As heard in the early tracks on this 2xCD/DVD
collection, when she was just a kid fronting pianist Teddy Wilson's
band
she sang with infectious energy and a child's enthusiasm. "What a
Little
Moonlight Can Do" from 1935 is a joyous up-tempo floor-filler and
Holiday sounds silly but self-aware, one step away from leaving the
bandstand and joining the party herself. At this point she hadn't yet
developed her extreme behind-the-beat lag (a quality Miles Davis
claimed
as an influence) but the timbre of her unmistakable voice was intact.
"I
Cried for You" from the following year is a bit slower but no less
buoyant, and the mid-tempo ballad "Mean to Me" from 1937, though about
a
deadbeat boyfriend, is delivered with sass and humor.

The Ultimate Collection deserves credit for assembling tracks from a
number of different labels, allowing us to hear the changes in style
and
approach from year to year. Holiday's music got heavier by the late
30s,
the time of the darkly brilliant allegory "Strange Fruit" and "God
Bless
the Child". This period through the mid-40s is when Holiday
recorded
her most famous sides, including "Billie's Blues", "Don't Explain", and
"Good Morning Heartache."

The second disc begins with Holiday getting the string section she
always wanted, the sweetness of the orchestrations serving as a
steadily
contrasting frame to her deteriorating voice. Songs like "You're My
Thrill" and "Crazy He Calls Me" have a disturbing gothic quality as
Holiday sounds aged beyond her years, and on spare ballads in front of
a
small combo like "Detour Ahead" and "It Had to Be You" she seems aware
of her tragic stature as she drifts off pitch and never sounds
convincing expressing warmer sentiments. By the time of the sole Lady
in
Satin selection "I'm a Fool to Want You" she sounds exhausted, like
someone who wants to lay down for a long, long time. The heavy reverb
on
her voice and the lush strings are weird and disorienting, almost an
attempt to throw her shortcomings to sharp relief. A few months later
she was gone.